Rudolph Reichmann

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Hans Andries Rudolph Reichmann (born March 15, 1821 in Schleswig ; † March 30, 1908 in Toledo , Iowa ) was a pioneer of the German press in the USA .

Life

family

Rudolph Reichmann was the son of the printer Christian Reichmann and his wife Anna Dorothea (née Hansen).

He was married to Anna (1822–1899), daughter of Johann F. Gotte and Meta (née Brüning), in Bremen since 1847 ; they had five children together:

  • Ferdinand Gustav Reichmann;
  • Johanna Ernestine Reichmann (born May 27, 1852 in Davenport / Iowa; † unknown in Sioux Valley near Jackson County / Minnesota ), married to Hans Asmus Brockmann (born April 18, 1847 in driving near Probsteierhagen , † February 2, 1922 in Lincoln near Tama / Iowa);
  • Fannie Reichmann (1855-1956);
  • Henriette Reichmann (1858–1929);
  • Louise Antoinette Reichmann (1861–1903), married to William Rose Graham (* March 27, 1858; † 1894).

In 1901, at the age of eighty, Rudolph Reichmann married for the second time.

education

He attended the cathedral school in Schleswig with the family set goal of becoming a pastor. However, because he did not like it, he learned the profession of printer in a five and a half year apprenticeship in a printing company in Schleswig.

Career

After several years as a printing assistant in various cities in Northern Germany and Hamburg , he decided to start his own business.

Because of his supporters of the Schleswig-Holstein movement, the authorities refused him the concession several times because he was not very Danish ; also an audience , mediated by the District President Ludwig Nicolaus von Scheele , with the Danish King Christian VIII , who was on the island of Föhr during the bathing season in 1847 , was unsuccessful; During the audience he had not shown the king the necessary respect, and the latter broke off the conversation after a short time and motioned him to leave the room; after he lifted his coat once more in the doorway, the king ordered him to come back, fixed him for a minute, and then motioned for him to leave the room again.

During the Schleswig-Holstein uprising in 1848 he was on the side of Schleswig-Holstein, but before the battle of Idstedt he decided to emigrate with his wife to the USA in order to build a new life there.

Career in the USA

On May 10, 1850, the family boarded an emigrant ship in Hamburg and landed nine weeks later in Quebec , from there a ship continued via Buffalo and Detroit to Chicago and from there to Sheboygan in Wisconsin .

In Sheboygan, after initially working as a typesetter in an English newspaper, he founded his first newspaper, the democratically-minded Wisconsin Republican , together with Alfred Guido Marschner (1824-1875), son of the composer Heinrich Marschner . Due to different political views, disputes between him and Marschner arose after a short time and he took advantage of the absence of Rudolph Reichmann, who was on a trip, and loaded the entire print shop onto a cart and disappeared; later he paid a severance payment of $ 200.

In Milwaukee , a city heavily influenced by immigrants, Rudolph Reichmann took over the management of a newspaper founded by the name of Volkshalle , which appeared three times a week; the editing of the newspaper was given to Gustav Adolph Rösler .

In Davenport, in the neighboring state of Iowa, in 1851 he teamed up with his compatriot Theodor Gülich, who was also born in Schleswig, and founded the newspaper Der Demokratie . They both belonged to the group of the so-called Forty-Eighters , who emigrated to the USA after the failure of the Schleswig-Holstein uprising against Copenhagen. Rudolph Reichmann described his hunting experiences several times in the newspaper; later the paper, which stood for a free and democratic society, developed into one of the most widely read newspapers in the Midwest.

However, the professional partnership ended in 1856 and Rudolph Reichmann opened a real estate office, which he ran until 1859. He went to Mercer County , Illinois, into the countryside , presumably for health reasons, engaged in farming with commercial success and became wealthy and financially independent. In 1865 he went to Tama County / Iowa and settled in the Spring Creek community . In addition to his professional activities, he was also involved in the social field and so held the office of justice of the peace until the fall of 1873 in the Spring Creek community.

After moving to Toledo in the fall of 1873, he founded and ran the politically independent newspaper Tama County Independent in 1874 . He sold his newspaper in 1878 and retired from active life. The new owner renamed the newspaper The Toledo Times and made it the most important newspaper in the region.

Rudolph Reichmann retired into private life around 1880.

After his death, he was buried in the local Woodlawn Cemetery. His children were the words: Do Right And Fear No One ( Tue right and fear no one ) chisel on his grave stone.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of Tama County Chapter X. Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
  2. ^ Extract from the index on the emigrant archive. Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
  3. ^ German biography: Marschner, Alfred Guido - German biography. Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The German Pioneer: Memories from the pioneering life of Germans in America . German Pioneer Association, 1876 ( google.de [accessed on August 7, 2020]).
  5. ^ Tama County Independent (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1874-1877. Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Rudolph Reichmann (1821-1908). Retrieved August 7, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Reichmann, Rudolph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reichmann, Hans Andries Rudolph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American newspaper publisher
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Schleswig
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1908
Place of death Toledo , Iowa